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Author: Patrick Randall
Khaled walked into an ISIS recruiting office and volunteered to fight — for $30 a month. Now he’s a refugee in Turkey. Here’s how he got from there to here.
A new ceasefire, which has not been fully observed, should be in effect in eastern Ukraine. But the announcement of the creation of a military air force could bring dangerous escalation.
Hampered by plummeting oil prices and fading public support, President Nicolas Maduro and his crafty sidekick, Assembly leader Diosdado Cabello, are trying to provoke an opposition outburst. Last week’s arrest of Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma was a c
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Song Du Jour #16, Johnny Cash
Today is the Man In Black’s birthday. He would have been 83 years old.
German tabloid Bild gets straight to the point in its Thursday edition: “No! No more millions for the greedy Greeks!” it says on its front page. The daily suggests that their readers who are against another Greek bailout print the page, take a selfie with it and send it to their staff. The Bundestag, Germany’s […]
Rights groups say that cops in Herat are cracking down on “adulterers,” stopping couples on the street,even brothers and sisters, and demanding proof of marriage.
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Song Du Jour #15, Jonny Greenwood
Radiohead’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood will play tonight at Geneva’s prestigious Victoria Hall with the London Contemporary Orchestra. He will perform his own experimental compositions with the small line-up, with which he has been playing since 2008. For those not lucky enough to live in Geneva or attend the concert, Jonny Greenwood and the LCO sounds […]
The latest issue of Charlie Hebdo published Wednesday, six weeks after the “Survivors’ Issue” that followed the deadly attacks on its headquarters on Jan. 7. As the weekly resumes its regular publication rhythm with the headline “C’est reparti!” (“Here we go again!”), 2.5 million copies of the latest Charlie Hebdo number 1179 have been printed. […]
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Song Du Jour #14, The Darkness
The British hard rock band The Darkness have just released the video for their new track, “Barbarian”, which opens their fourth and upcoming album Last Of Our Kind. In the form of a graphic novel, “Barbarian” describes how the Vikings invaded East Anglia. Last Of Our Kind will be released on June 1.
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Song Du Jour #13, Fleetwood Mac
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Worldcrunch’s Weekend Staff Playlist #8
French yé-yé, American jazz, Scottish punk, Irish accoustic, Portuguese metal and Brit pop… It’s this weekend’s Worldcrunch staff playlist.
SALAWAG — In the multi-player online battle video game Defense of the Ancients, or DotA, the aim is to conquer the opposing team on the other side of the map. The graphics are impressive, and the play is challenging. But for some, the game is not just about friendly competition, after it’s been blamed as a contributing factor in the Dec. 15 murder of a 19-year-old, who was allegedly stabbed by his friend outside a computer gaming shop after the two were playing the game. The boy responsible is now in government custody, and the incident pushed local officials to […]
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Song Du Jour #12, Blur
In a livestreamed press conference on their Facebook page Thursday, Blur announced the release of a surprise new album on April 27, their first since Think Tank in 2003. Their eighth studio album will be called The Magic Whip and is set to include the following tracklist: The Magic Whip was partly recorded in Hong […]
Nigeria’s rescheduled March 28 presidential elections should be able to take place despite disruption threats made Tuesday by Boko Haram. But the country’s security services, such as the military, the Service Chiefs and the National Security Adviser, will have to “guarantee the sanctity of the rescheduled polls in view of the security challenges facing the […]
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Song Du Jour #11, Beck West
Are you team Beck or team Kanye? If it ever really mattered at all, it doesn’t now: Arcade Fire’s Win Butler, a.k.a. Dj Windows 98 on Soundcloud, uploaded a mashup of the former’s “Loser” and the latter’s “Jesus Walks”. The result is rather interesting, even though he was far from being the first to come […]
In 2010, French police seized a huge stash of previously unseen Picasso drawings at the home of the late artist’s electrician. Were they gifts or stolen goods? An ongoing trial will decide.
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Song Du Jour #10, Pancake Rap
It’s Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, so our song of the day is this impressive “Pancake Rap” by Mac Lethal.
A hard European retort to an attitude that extends from Silicon Valley to the White House, which says that the United States’ dominance in new technology should give it free license abroad.
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Song Du Jour #9, Siska
The French trip hop singer Siska has released “Unconditional Rebel”, the first single from her upcoming EP, set to be released on March 2. For the clip, the French director Guillaume Panariello performed quite the technical prowess: in a car driving in a straight line at 50 km/h (31 mph), he shot a five-second scene […]
“We Are Danish” — Libération, Feb. 16, 2015 One month after the shootings in Paris that killed 17 people, a similar terror attack left two dead and five wounded in the Danish capital Copenhagen over the weekend. In the same way the world honored the victims and the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with the “Je […]
In the fifth grade, a 10-year-old Noh Blaghen discovered graphic Japanese comics, otherwise known as mangas. It was in the early 2000s in Benin, Nigeria, and they were rare there. A friend’s parents, who had been traveling in France and in Belgium, returned home with stacks of them, which Noh devoured with his friends. In […]
The Ukraine ceasefire reached in Minsk represents a major diplomatic success for Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel, hopefully the first of many.
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Worldcrunch’s Weekend Staff Playlist #7
Last week in Albuquerque, New Mexico, several people formed a heart to raise awareness on heart diseases — Photo: Marla Brose/Albuquerque Journal/ZUMA Our staff playlist this weekend is love-themed, obviously. Because this Saturday, like every Feb. 14 since the year 842, the world will remember the Oaths of Strasbourg, in which Louis the German, ruler […]
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Learning And Playing Music Makes You Smarter
Musical education, not only at a young age but also into adulthood, could have a significant and lasting impact on the development of the brain as well as on speech awareness, a study published in the The Journal of Neuroscience reveals. According to the researchers from Canada’s Rotman Institute, practicing music before the age of […]
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Song Du Jour #8, Spice Girls
Four previously unreleased Spice Girls songs recorded in the late 90s have “leaked” online this week. Three of them were soon deleted but one ballad, “A Day In Your Life”, is still there.
PESHAWAR — Schools in Peshawar now look like police stations, equipped with barbed wire, surveillance cameras and snipers after the Taliban’s December assault on a school that killed 132 students. Officials told schools to be prepared for other attacks, and in an extraordinary measure, the Khyber Pakhtunkua government is allowing teachers to keep guns at school. The local police are also now training female teachers in how to use guns. Ashraf Khan teaches in a primary school not far from the army public school that the Taliban attacked in December. The first thing he does in the morning when he […]
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Song Du Jour #7, The Smiths
The Smiths’ second and most commercially successfull studio album Meat Is Murder was released exactly 30 years ago, on Feb. 11, 1985.
A record 53 French police officers committed suicide last year. The Courbat, a health facility, treats officers suffering from burnout, depression and alcoholism with a very specific therapy.
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Song Du Jour #6, Elka
Right behind Madonna in the top of the Russian charts, the Ukrainian singer Elka is enjoying commercial success with her single “Body Ofigel.”
A federal ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in Alabama took effect Monday. But in up to 52 of the state’s 67 counties, most judges refused to go through with processing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, the International New York Times reports in its issue Tuesday. Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Alabama Supreme […]
The more time technology saves us, the less we feel we have. Three researchers explore this modern ‘double paradox.’
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Song Du Jour #1, Saturn’s Pattern
It’s only a snippet, but it’s a good way to start the week. Paul Weller has released a teaser of his upcoming album “Saturn’s Pattern”, which will be released next spring. The former frontman of The Jam said this album “is one of the best things I’ve done,” according to this month’s issue of Uncut. […]
In Beijing alone, more than 1,000 acres of historical areas have been lost since 1990. As rural Chinese move to cities, the country must figure out how to preserve its heritage.
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Worldcrunch’s Weekend Staff Playlist #6
Our staff playlist for this weekend involves an interesting mix of Brit rock’n’roll, Mandapop, Brazilian samba and some sort of Russian techno. Enjoy!
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Song Du Jour #5, Gang Of Four
Gang of Four, the emblematic post-punks from Leeds, released a video yesterday featuring The Kills’ Alison Mosshart for their track “England’s In My Bones”. The song will appear on their upcoming 9th studio album What Happens Next, which will be released on Feb. 24 in the U.S. and on March 2 in Europe.
The dynamics of social networks have established a climate of caution for young people, whose sense of fun is more narcissistic and less political than previous generations.
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Song Du Jour #4, Polycat
The synth-pop band Polycat is currently topping the charts in Thailand, its home country. Produced by the Bangkok-based record label Smallroom, the quintet was voted new artist of the year 2012 by the Thai radio station Fat Radio.
Though the Pakistan Taliban was responsible for the murders of 130 students in Peshawar, the local government believes some of the country’s longtime Afghan refugees harbor terrorists. Deportation and confinements have begun.
Technology has transformed the world of prosthetics. But are all the bells and whistles, and the hefty price tags they require, really what ordinary patients need?